Shave effect?

RE: Shave effect?

jim thornton — Sun, 10 Mar 2013 10:43:39 GMT

www-rohan.sdsu.edu/dept/coachsci/swim/hydros/sharp2.htm

RE: Shave effect?

orca1946 — Sat, 09 Mar 2013 12:31:11 GMT

I think is a really good thing for big meets for me. I only shave everywhere for Nats. Maybe legs & arms for State meets.

RE: Shave effect?

Former Member — Thu, 07 Mar 2013 16:06:05 GMT

What's next, enter a 500 at your next meet? Strangely, I wanted to do the 500 just for something different. There is only one more meet this season with a 500 in it, and its right before the 50 free. Not willing to sacrifice a 50 for a 500 at this point. If I could've added it at the end I would've done it. I'm betting i could go 5:25 in yards without too much trouble.

RE: Shave effect?

__steve__ — Wed, 06 Mar 2013 10:04:26 GMT

To bring back a dormant thread, but interesting topic I saw a paper (I think cited in these forums, tho I can't find it now) where they did a study of the effect. Shaving actually DECREASED nerve stimulation (like a suit does) and this had some physiological effect that I can't quite remember, decreased lactate levels or something.I am curious if whether the physiological gain in performance is a temporary thing, as a decreasing response to the state of being freshly shaven, or if it remains active so long as you are shaved

RE: Shave effect?

Former Member — Wed, 06 Mar 2013 08:56:38 GMT

I know that for awhile after a taper meet I am really fast in practice until the hair grows back. Living that right now... I feel fast as hell but endurance seems lower because its hard not to swim everything sprint when you feel fast. :) 100m pull swims on 1:30 interval holding 1:12's seems somewhat effortless right now whereas normally it'd be somewhat tiring after a bunch.

RE: Shave effect?

__steve__ — Wed, 06 Mar 2013 05:13:37 GMT

100m pull swims on 1:30 interval holding 1:12's seems somewhat effortless What's next, enter a 500 at your next meet? . . . . :D

RE: Shave effect?

Allen Stark — Wed, 06 Mar 2013 02:01:25 GMT

I know that for awhile after a taper meet I am really fast in practice until the hair grows back.

RE: Shave effect?

Allen Stark — Thu, 21 Apr 2011 12:34:37 GMT

www.tuftsmarathonchallenge.com/.../Why Swimmers Shave Down!.doc forums.usms.org/attachment.php I don't have the time right now, or know enough physiology, to be able to evaluate carefully what Megerle is claiming. But it is enough to convince me that the standard answers of "reduced friction," "hypersensitivity," and/or "it's mostly psychological" may not have much actual weight of evidence behind them. Enjoy reading, do additional research and decide for yourself. But most of what is claimed on this thread (whether true or not) are purely speculative. Very interesting articles but I still don't buy it. The statement that shaving doesn't reduce drag is patently wrong.Push off streamlined and see how far you glide,now shave and try it. I don't remember the reference,but they did tests on drag by pulling swimmers and shaving reduced drag by about enough to account for all the improvement in speed. The improvement in DPS and deceased O2 use can also be explained by reduced drag. Also in the first paper he shows how shaving can increase sensitivity and then asserts that the decreased sensitivity is the reason it is an advantage. He also asserts that decreased muscle recruitment is a reason for increased efficiency with really no evidence. The author may know much more about this than I(my medical training being 37 years ago) but it looks like he has a hypothesis and bends the data to prove it.I read his data and come to a different conclusion(but then I may be the stubborn,wrong one,fitting the data to my preconceived idea,Nawww,not me:bolt:)

RE: Shave effect?

pmccoy — Thu, 21 Apr 2011 10:15:41 GMT

Laminar flow is not necessarily advantageous from a drag reduction standpoint. Consider the flow around a cylinder: www.princeton.edu/.../blunt.html You actually want flow separation to occur earlier (as in the turbulent case) because it creates a smaller wake. Now the question is whether or not a swimmer in the water is anything like a cylinder. In a streamlined position we should create less drag than a cylinder, but we aren't exactly airfoils, either. I write software now so keep in mind that my mechanical engineering backgound is very fuzzy. I did like fluid dynamics since it applied well to my sailing hobby. With that in mind, I recall that drag is reduced in turbulent water. That partly explains why swimming in someone's draft improves performance. I used to wonder if it would improve the performance of a sailboat to place a tripwire just below the water at the bow of the boat. The problem with that is the boat isn't a cylinder... it is a streamlined shape and you want to keep the laminar flow and reduce skin drag as much as possible. Humans are a bit different that boats. We are forced to surface at 15m at which point our streamlined shape is lost. At some point, we are better off on top of the water either because we can propel ourselves faster than we can SDK or due to threat of disqualification. So, we transition from a streamlined shape to a not quite so streamlined shape at some point. If I read the link right, during the streamlined phase, we are more concerned by skin drag. This is where I believe shaving makes a difference if it does at all. Once we break streamline, pressure drag is more dominant and we prefer turbulent water for wake reduction. As to Chris' links, they sound good but don't talk much about methodology for quantifying the physiological components. I'm sure the referenced papers address that in some way. One comment he made struck me as odd: "Shaving does not reduce water resistance nor eliminate the amount of friction on the skin." That's a pretty bold statement as hair folicles would at the very least increase the surface area on the boundary layer. I don't think anyone is arguing that shaving has no effect on drag... its a matter of whether it has negligible effect or not. I'm also a bit skeptical about whether or not the physiological response (if it exists) is due to a change in how the nervous system senses water after a shave or due to a placebo effect. The write up makes some compelling arguments for the former and I'm hardly qualified to debunk any of this... nor am I up for digging through research papers at the moment.

RE: Shave effect?

orca1946 — Thu, 21 Apr 2011 07:01:39 GMT

I feel odd not lifting in starting my taper!!

RE: Shave effect?

knelson — Thu, 21 Apr 2011 06:56:17 GMT

There is this perception out there that when you taper you have a couple days of optimum swimming and then it is a sharp downhill from there as you get "out of shape." I think that is wrong. I think that if you taper well you have a reasonably long period of fast swimming in you, and with proper management that period can be extended longer. That's why I think that, if you err, you should err on the side of resting too much rather than too little Yes, if that's the case people who "miss their taper" probably just didn't rest enough. There have definitely been cases where I taper for a meet, then stay out of the water for a few days and when I come back to practice I swim very fast.

RE: Shave effect?

Former Member — Thu, 21 Apr 2011 06:27:09 GMT

I always wondered if you could test the claim of the aquablade stripes by shaving vertical stripes onto your body and seeing if it works. :banana:

RE: Shave effect?

orca1946 — Thu, 21 Apr 2011 06:26:11 GMT

My brain likes the fell of NEW water!

RE: Shave effect?

Chris Stevenson — Thu, 21 Apr 2011 06:25:02 GMT

Agreed. I have had "extended tapers" many times and have never been disappointed; more often than not I've continued to get faster. If (for example) I was doing a meet 4 weeks after nationals, I would probably bump up the workload slightly for awhile but nowhere near "in-season" levels (which I suspect many college programs do). There is this perception out there that when you taper you have a couple days of optimum swimming and then it is a sharp downhill from there as you get "out of shape." I think that is wrong. I think that if you taper well you have a reasonably long period of fast swimming in you, and with proper management that period can be extended longer. That's why I think that, if you err, you should err on the side of resting too much rather than too little. One season I did a 4-week long taper for LCM nationals (it was actually a double-taper: 2-weeks for one meet, then another 2-weeks for nats). Then I had a week-long vacation of no swimming whatsoever, followed by a 2-mile OW swim that I entered on a lark bc it happened to be in the area where we were camping. So after 5 weeks of taper -- including one of no swimming -- I should be in horrible shape, right? No, I did just fine, didn't die at all. We do 1 hour or longer practices for races which mostly last 2 minutes or less. We're all in good shape. Sorry for the thread hijack...

RE: Shave effect?

knelson — Thu, 21 Apr 2011 02:27:53 GMT

I thought Megerle's recommendation to not increase yardage between conference and NCAA's was interesting. I have a feeling most teams bump up the yardage again after their conference meet for a week and then drop back down.

RE: Shave effect?

Chris Stevenson — Thu, 21 Apr 2011 01:54:15 GMT

My point is that shaving clearly has some drag reduction effect.Measuring how much effect the techsuits had on drag reduction was also very difficult,but clearly the result was that there was some significant effect.I don't believe anyone is suggesting the drag suits worked by decreasing sensation,nor by increasing sensation. If shaving decreases drag,which it does,and techsuits decease drag,which they do,and both increase speed,which they do ,then I deduce that the deceased drag from shaving increases speed. I agree it reduces friction, especially for pretty hairy people. But as Peter says, the real question is how significant an effect it is. Some less hairy people get pretty good drops too. Of course, pretty much everyone shaves AND tapers at the same time... I am not so sure that the "change in sensation" didn't have some effects of the tech suits. I am not sure anyone quite figured out exactly WHY they worked.

RE: Shave effect?

knelson — Thu, 21 Apr 2011 01:31:53 GMT

From what I remember of fluid dynamics, shaving would help more with streamlining where water flow around you is more laminar. Hair will tend to disrupt the flow of water around your body and make it turbulent sooner and further forward which I suppose will break the streamline sooner. Laminar flow is not necessarily advantageous from a drag reduction standpoint. Consider the flow around a cylinder: www.princeton.edu/.../blunt.html You actually want flow separation to occur earlier (as in the turbulent case) because it creates a smaller wake. Now the question is whether or not a swimmer in the water is anything like a cylinder. In a streamlined position we should create less drag than a cylinder, but we aren't exactly airfoils, either.

RE: Shave effect?

Allen Stark — Thu, 21 Apr 2011 01:25:20 GMT

I will try to remember to look at the papers more carefully when I have some time. But I have always questioned how applicable the measurements of passive pull experiments, if that's what they were, are to the actual act of swimming. Excellent point.Fluid dynamics of irregularly shaped ,moving ,flexible objects are incredibly complex and way beyond my understanding. My point is that shaving clearly has some drag reduction effect.Measuring how much effect the techsuits had on drag reduction was also very difficult,but clearly the result was that there was some significant effect.I don't believe anyone is suggesting the drag suits worked by decreasing sensation,nor by increasing sensation. If shaving decreases drag,which it does,and techsuits decease drag,which they do,and both increase speed,which they do ,then I deduce that the deceased drag from shaving increases speed.

RE: Shave effect?

Chris Stevenson — Thu, 21 Apr 2011 01:11:41 GMT

Very interesting articles but I still don't buy it. The statement that shaving doesn't reduce drag is patently wrong.Push off streamlined and see how far you glide,now shave and try it. I don't remember the reference,but they did tests on drag by pulling swimmers and shaving reduced drag by about enough to account for all the improvement in speed. The improvement in DPS and deceased O2 use can also be explained by reduced drag. Also in the first paper he shows how shaving can increase sensitivity and then asserts that the decreased sensitivity is the reason it is an advantage. He also asserts that decreased muscle recruitment is a reason for increased efficiency with really no evidence. The author may know much more about this than I(my medical training being 37 years ago) but it looks like he has a hypothesis and bends the data to prove it.I read his data and come to a different conclusion(but then I may be the stubborn,wrong one,fitting the data to my preconceived idea,Nawww,not me:bolt:) Perhaps; I will try to remember to look at the papers more carefully when I have some time. But I have always questioned how applicable the measurements of passive pull experiments, if that's what they were, are to the actual act of swimming.

RE: Shave effect?

pmccoy — Thu, 21 Apr 2011 01:04:19 GMT

Push off streamlined and see how far you glide,now shave and try it.I agree 100% with this but subjective testing is one of the things clouding the whole shaving mystery. I'm about to put together a pump, bathtub and force guage to end the controversy for good. Anyone want to donate some skin? I'd use mine but I just don't have enough hair. All I need is a 3 x 5 patch... hairier the better... it should grow back.

RE: Shave effect?

Former Member — Wed, 20 Apr 2011 10:11:29 GMT

It's not so much the hair but the top layer of newly exposed skin. One doesn't have to be part gorilla to benefit from the shave down. The jolt of entering the water usually gets most people fired up and in turn they move with much more vigor. When you jump in, the feeling is akin to an electrical shock if that makes any sense. Every inch of skin is acutely aware of the water...and maybe in turn it creates hyper sensitivity...as per Rob's description.

RE: Shave effect?

Jimbosback — Wed, 20 Apr 2011 09:33:30 GMT

In my case this morning, I was not trying to go fast. I was ploddng along warming up as usual. Perhaps there was a subconscious expectation that I'd be faster. I did have a great awareness of my legs, but I was lazy kicking the warm-up as usual, as far as I know. Maybe it was more the taper effect -- I am jumping out of my skin this evening.

RE: Shave effect?

Former Member — Wed, 20 Apr 2011 08:46:19 GMT

My head gets sharkskin after about 6 hours, so I think I will shave it each day. Yeah, do that :) This year is the first year I ever shaved before a meet in the morning. Usually I ALWAYS shave at about 8-9pm the night before. I got it down to an hour now for everything not covered by a jammer. The head is the quickest part surprisingly. I get that done in less than 10 min. All the women probably laugh that a leg can take 10-15 min to shave.

RE: Shave effect?

Former Member — Wed, 20 Apr 2011 08:24:23 GMT

I did a practice shave of my legs last night, to get used to it and also figure out how long it takes me for planning purposes. Today in practice, I was faster than usual. The most obvious was in my 200 free warm-up. I dps the first 100 and then gradually speed up to about 75%. Usually I am around 3 minutes. Monday, I went 2:51. Today, I was 2:36 with the usual effort level. My 200 *** warm-up was about 10 seconds faster than usual. Can shaving really improve things that much? Is some of this because I am tapering? Also, for those guys who shave your heads, do you also wear a cap? If not, is the bald head better than a cap? Shaving can be an amazing thing as far as cutting time. Nothing like that feel when you first dive in. I will never wear a cap. My hair grows so fast that even after one day I get the total sandpaper thing going so i reshave the head nightly for multi-day big meets. If its longer than a 2 day meet I reshave the rest also before day 3. So you shaved during taper but before the big meet? Don't "waste" the shave though by doing it too early. You dont want to get used to that feel as it should be a new, quicker feel that you don't get any other time of the year than the end of taper time for the big meet. In my opinion the shave is just as much psychological as it is physical... and not being used to that is a big part. Some guys even wear pantyhose(toes cut off and tied off around the ankle) after shaving so that they don't get that shaved feel for anything but a race. Just my advice anyway

RE: Shave effect?

Chris Stevenson — Wed, 20 Apr 2011 07:49:01 GMT

Shaving does not reduce water resistance nor eliminate the amount of friction on the skin. Dr. David Costill, the famous research/physiologist from Ball State University, reported that shaven swimmers actually have lower blood lactate levels, increased stroke lengths (distance per stroke), and improved push-offs (better streamlining). www.tuftsmarathonchallenge.com/.../Why Swimmers Shave Down!.doc forums.usms.org/attachment.php I don't have the time right now, or know enough physiology, to be able to evaluate carefully what Megerle is claiming. But it is enough to convince me that the standard answers of "reduced friction," "hypersensitivity," and/or "it's mostly psychological" may not have much actual weight of evidence behind them. Enjoy reading, do additional research and decide for yourself. But most of what is claimed on this thread (whether true or not) are purely speculative.